Allow GIFs in Bluesky #1157
Replies: 42 comments 37 replies
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I think the common consensus these days is to convert to video though. GIF animations are often huge and would get mangled if resized on upload to fit in, eg, 1MB limit. It is basically video, in terms of bandwidth, UX considerations, etc. While we are at it, could also consider webp and APNG animations. I don't have any market share numbers about how prevalent those actually are, so maybe not a priority. But, totally agree fun! |
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+1 to this. They're needed by the '#BuildInPublic' users. ie: Developers/artists/creators post short work-in-progress gifs of what they're working on. I think it would be worth prioritising this, because without it - those users can't migrate their posting over. |
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im an indie game developer, twitter has (or at least had) a really popular community of indie game devs who share gifs of their progress on their games. would be nice if bluesky/at supported them so this type of content can be posted there too |
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webp has rather great usage support across browers given that it is also supported on ios versions 14 and above and android 4 and above. apng has greater support for older devices/browsers, but it's compression methods aren't as favourable to webp. The avif image format has a growing but not comparably high usage/compatibility in browsers, it's based on the AV1 video format and compresses better than webp in some cases, but getting data on how well these are support across non-browser experiences didn't bear any fruit I think other data like it's encoding and decoding performance would be important for both client and server, but I don't have good data on these |
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+1 to this suggestion. |
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Any update on this? |
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Huge +1 for this feature.
My understanding is that Twitter has done the conversion to video for quite a long time. Back when I used it over 5 years ago, I once uploaded a video that lacked audio and it was treated as a gif, getting both the looping playback treatment and that little "GIF" text that shows in the bottom-left corner. Also, any time I've tried to download a gif from Twitter, it's given me an MP4 video that uses H.264 and lacks an audio track. I also took a random gif on my phone and with Termux, used ffmpeg to convert it to H.264. Took just a couple seconds, even on a low-power phone and the file size went from >6MB to <250KB. So I'd say yes, just do the conversion to H.264 and save everyone the resources in the end. If a phone can do it in a couple seconds, no one's gonna notice it being converted live by a server and then served back to them in the composition's image preview area. |
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Also a +1 for this with the MP4 container and H.264 codec (for now). If the goal is to have folks migrate from Twitter and other services like Mastodon and to grow bsky, uploading gifs and short videos should definitely be part of the very-near-term roadmap. I fully understand the complexity and resourcing involved, but this is also pretty much a core feature of every single social network / app that bsky is competing with. Love what you folks are doing! |
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+1 to GIF support - I'm a game developer who primarily uses twitter to share progress on our titles. GIFs have been essential for this. GIF support should be an urgent priority if users are to consider Bluesky as a serious replacement to Twitter going forward. |
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just passing by and dropping +1 |
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I'm also a game developer. I've been able to select GIFs from my Photos when running the iOS app on macOS. But when it is So other than the technical aspect of which file format, there's also the user interface and user experience considerations. On Twitter and Mastodon I can add images by pasting a link or image data from the clipboard, dragging and dropping, or the system picker. |
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I'm a new-ish user who has wished for GIF support on several occasions already; dropping by in support of the functionality. |
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+1 need GIFs asap! |
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I double checked this: it is in fact an upscaled PNG that gets |
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@Arsenic110 unfortunately not, although some third-party apps have been picking up the pieces, like Graysky and deck.blue They have done quite a good job despite the limitations they're working with (eg: file size limit). At the very least, I think those limitations could be improved. +1 GIF support! Thank you! |
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Another +1. |
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adding my +1 to this, im a game developer and the lack of gifs here means i literally cannot move over from twitter. nearly every single offline convo i've had about this site as a twitter alternative ends with "too bad there's no gifs/video". seems like the team isn't interested in prioritizing it but seriously, you have no idea how much this is holding the site back from being a viable alternative |
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That seems like an important feature! Perhaps there should be an issue for it |
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HURRAAAAYYYYYYYYYYY!!!!!
Thanks for the heads-up!
Debbie
Debbie Ridpath Ohi - Children’s book author & illustrator
Website ~ Twitter ~ Instagram (art) ~ Bookstagram - Substack - BlueSky
…On Dec 28, 2023 at 1:37 PM -0500, surfdude29 ***@***.***>, wrote:
You're in luck, please see bluesky-social/social-app#2314 and bluesky-social/social-app#2353
At this stage it's embed support rather than full built-in support, but it's still an important step forward
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should I mention I have a gif avatar on TWTR ? (lookup my handle same as my github) |
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Another +1 from me, just uploaded a gif and was shocked to find it displayed only a single frame. Not even attempting to convert it to some modern format or even just telling me gifs aren't supported feels misleading |
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We've shipped Tenor integration now! |
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Also better than gif and apng - allow support for avif images which also have animation. |
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I'm a pixel-art animator who wants to participate in Bluesky. My biggest and most heavy gifs are less than 500 KB, and most of my gifs are 100 KB on average. And I'm being prohibited from posting them. Gifs are a native feature of every single browser. Rendering them is extremely easy. Embed the image, and you're done. Set a reasonable upload limit and let the people do what they will with it. Maybe some of them will fumble and the gif will look funny. That's how it goes. If you're serving static images, you can serve a gif by putting the gif in the markdown my browser gets served. A clickthrough or a setting for epileptic accessibility, at the absolute maximum, even though gif-handling accessibility tools exist for many browsers to address that need anyway. Enable the gif filetype. Do not compress it, resize it, or otherwise alter the file uploaded by the user in any way besides renaming it. Then serve it to the browser and let the browser render it. It's incredibly easy and demands nothing besides not overhandling it. Anything less than this course of action is aesthetic garbage that prioritizes visual branding over user experience or user growth, and I won't use this site at all until it works that way. |
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Hello! I just uploaded a GIF to Tenor and its already appearing on other apps, but still isn't appearing on Bluesky gif search. Is there any cache to refresh? |
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As a developer and designer myself, I think you'll find users will jump through any hoops to post animated content if quality is preserved. Users will jump through whatever conversion/codec hoops they need to. If users have to host their content, they'll find a way. If users have to pre-convert their content, they'll find a way. |
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I'm glad Bluesky is about to get video support, but I'd like to give a +1 to this. I'm a open-source maintainer and GIFs (or MP4s that behave like GIFs) are very important to my work. Although videos are crucial as well, being able to show a small piece of animated content about an app or game is very important. Specially when that piece plays automatically or at least when the mouse hovers like it is done on mastodon/fosstodon. It helps a lot with showcasing features/animations. Even more so than videos on many occasions cause the instantaneous nature of GIFs (or MP4s that behave just like GIFs) means that that short animation is presented right away to the audience and in a short interval of time, which is suitable considering the short attention span of us internet users. If you are hesitant about supporting user-uploaded GIFs on the platform, at least allow short MP4s with autoplay and no audio. They'd serve the same purpose, use much less space and I'm sure creators like myself would not mind using the MP4 format. It is probably the format in which they captured the media originally anyway (that or MKVs). |
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+1 for gif support. |
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They're fun & right now we only support jpeg & png
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